Customer Reviews

Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (History of Modern Physics, 1800-1950)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Laura Fermi explains her husband life: the family, the adventures of the italian physicists, the Nobel prize, the American life, the Manhattan project. But Fermi life is full of physics, and in the book you don't find any explanation of the discoveries which took most of his time. It is a pity that Laura didn't get more information from her husband work to realize how great it was and how it influenced the future of quantum mechanic. Fermi was one of the top ones. I recommend this book as a preliminar biography but not as a deep one.

I rated this so high, partly because it is one of the few books I remember reading, 35+ years ago. Around the same time I had read another book about the Manhattan Project, "The Traitors," by Alan Moorehead (apparently out of print.) Between the two I found out that most of the scientists' wives were not told why their husbands were so excited on the night of July 16, 1945 until after the war was over; meanwhile Stalin was notified through his spy network within 48 hours, during the Potsdam Conference.

I also thought she told a great story about the difficulties for a family to not only move into a strange country with strange languages and customs, only to find themselves rushed into an isolated paramilitary environment.

No great lessons in nuclear fission, lots for nuclear families.

BTW, I was surprised that Amazon does not cross-list this among the other Manhattan Project books.

I first read this book more than 40 years ago. I still reread it, now and then. It is the source of most of the anecdotes that helped to explain, and disseminate, the Fermi style of doing physics. I am particularly fond of the memories of the youth of Laura Fermi, when Enrico was a young "dottore", and, together with a group of friends, used to hike the Italian Alps at holidays. Everything was used to teach science, or the way of thinking needed in science (for instance, the thermodynamics of the frying pan!). Later you'll find this "physics at the finger tips" approach used to estimate the power emitted at the first nuclear explosion. A great book.

This was a fairly easy book to read. It was more of a personal account of what life was like for Fermi and his family. Not too technical, but still enjoyable.

Enrico Fermi was a supremely talented scientist of the twentieth century, perhaps the only scientist who was uniquely accomplished in both experimental and theoretical physics. Fermi contributed massively to almost every branch of modern physics, and almost any one of his discoveries would have been enough to win him a Nobel Prize. In this book, his wife Laura Fermi affectionately and engagingly tells us the story of this singular individual and his all-consuming passion for physics.

Laura brings a personal touch to the great man's life that is rarely seen. This is especially valuable for someone like Fermi who was a rather private individual and not fond of talking about personal matters. Laura recounts Fermi's childhood and background, including his taking refuge in physics after a personal tragedy in which his brother and best friend Giulio died when he was 15. After this incident Fermi's life trajectory was set. He quickly rose through the ranks to become Professor of Physics at Rome. Laura describes their meeting and how she was wonderstruck by the intellect and unassuming nature of the young man. She endearingly describes their time together in Italy during a decade that was very important and exciting for the development of modern physics.

Much of the book's appeal comes from personal glimpses into Fermi's personal life as well as his and Laura's life in the United States after they fled from Mussolini's anti-Semitism (Laura was Jewish). Laura describes the remarkable discoveries Fermi made in Rome with neutrons, his enduring friendship with other extraordinary scientists and their migration to America. She has amusing stories about adjusting in the United States and about Fermi's singularly important work on the Manhattan Project. She describes the great secrecy during the project because of which Fermi could not tell her earlier about what was probably his greatest achievement- the construction of the world's first nuclear reactor, a watershed in world history. She also tells us about amusing aspects of life in the secret and remarkable community of Los Alamos, where there was an entire division created just for Fermi. Accompanying all these stories are anecdotes about the great physicists of the century, most of whom Fermi personally knew well and who respected him tremendously for his knowledge and modesty.

All things considered, this is a rare glimpse into the life of a most extraordinary scientist provided by someone who personally knew him as well or better than anyone could. It is a very valuable book and deserves an important place in the history of physics.

Excellent book. Very well written, especially considering that it was written in English by a non-native speaker of the language. Regardless of the writing, it tells a story that had largely been kept secret from my husband, even though he received a university degree in Physics. He has found substantial confirmation of what Laura Fermi wrote in several books by Emilio Segre, and at many Web sites.

On first glance the title of this book appears to be a play on the ADDAMS FAMILY TV series. However, this book was originally published in 1952 and the TV series didn't come out until a decade later. However, there was apparently a newspaper cartoon that the TV series was based on, and that dates back to the 1930s. Whether Mrs. Fermi made a conscious pun or not I don't know. Would be a bizarre nexus between the Addams family & the great Enrico Fermi, but.....

In any case, this book is a biography of Enrico Fermi, who was the greatest Italian physicist of the 20th century. He was probably the greatest Italian scientist since Galileo Galilei. Fermi was in charge of the first team to successfully unleash a controlled nuclear reaction. Also, one major type of photon (the "Fermion") is named after him [the other major type of photon is the "Boson"].

One of the nice things about having a non-scientist (in this case, his wife) write the biography is that we get to see the man "behind the equations." Laura Fermi describes his quirks and we also find out that he had a sense-of-humor almost comparable to Richard Feynman.

Another intriguing aspect of the book is that we get a view of the Manhattan Project from a non-scientist's point of view. Mrs. Fermi gives us an inside look at the living conditions and everyday duties / chores of someone who was not actually working on the bomb. This is an interesting viewpoint as I've read several other accounts of Los Alamos as told thru the eyes of the scientists who worked on the bomb.

This is an important book that gives insight into one of the biggest names in modern physics. That he ended up settling in the United States is of great fortitude to we Americans. His discoveries have been a monumental boon to science, and in this book is his life story.

The novel Atoms in the Family; My Life With Enrico Fermi by Laura Fermi is a superbly well written biography. Laura Fermi recounts her husband's life starting from his childhood when he taught himself physics, to his life in the Universities and winning his Nobel prize, to immigrating to the United States because of the Fascist leaders taking over their home town in Italy. Enrico Fermi was a brilliant man who discovered his passion and talent for physics and mathematics at a very young age. He first attended and then taught at some of the most prestigious schools around the world. His devotion to physics and his consistency in his research got him the respect of many people all around the world.
The author, I believe, was compelled to write this story as a tribute to the many accomplishments of her husband. Also, she wanted to give the world the story of Enrico Fermi's life from her perspective.
Though I disagree with the production and utilization of any kind of bomb, let alone atomic bombs, I enjoyed reading this novel because it recounted a bit of human history. Laura Fermi has not made this novel more than a mere biography. It is an exciting story of a man's life, his many accomplishments along with his fears and doubts.

Wrote by Doogie Ortonward
Did you wonder what stopped world war 2? Well I helped end it I'm Enrico Fermi the inventor of the nuclear pile. I was born Sep 29,1901 In Rome Italy. When I was born my mom sent me and my brother (Giulio) to live with nurses, because she did not have enough money to take care of me properly.
But took me back home when I was two 1/2. I had one sister and one brother, Maria and Giulio. I was the oldest of the bunch. Then I started elementary school when I was 6. Soon I got to be at the top of my class. I stared studying algebra in 5th grade from the books I loaned from my dads co-worker milder. Milder and my dad both worked at the ministry of communication. my mom worked at the elementary school. But soon a tragic event struck my family. My brother Giulio died of a throat abscess I was a young age of 14. so I would not think about his death I immersed my self in to scientific study. I thing that all still stays stuck in my mind I always walked by the hospital where he had died for so long in till the I got inured by the pain of his death. Now I'm in high school and the 3rd year I had skipped. Now the adventure was just beginning, off to the Scuola Normale Superiore (University of Pisa) at the young age of 17. After four years studying at the University of Pisa, I was awarded his doctorate in physics in 1922.
For the next several years, I worked with some of the greatest physicists in Europe, including Max Born(Physicist) and Paul Ehrenfest(mathematician), while also teaching at the University of Florence and then at the University of Rome.
Then I Got married to Laura Capon in 1928 , soon giving birth to Nella 3 years later. In 1934, I came up with the idea to use neutrons, which have no charge, as projectiles. I would shoot a neutron like an arrow into an atom's nucleus. Many of these nuclei absorbed the extra neutron during this process, creating isotopes for every element. For the next member in my family is Giulio in 1936. He was named after my brother that had died in 1915.
Though it doesn't seem to make sense, I found that by slowing down the neutron, it often had a larger impact on the nucleus. I found that the speed at which the neutron was most impacted differed for every element. For these two discoveries about atoms, I was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938.

The timing was just right for the Nobel Prize. Antisemitism was strengthening within Italy at this time and though I was not Jewish, my wife was. I accepted the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and then immediately immigrated to the United States. He arrived in the U.S. in 1939 and began working at Columbia University in New York City as a professor of physics.

I continued his research at Columbia University. Though I had unknowingly split a nucleus during his earlier experiments, credit for splitting an atom (fission) was given to Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1939. However, I quickly realized that if you split an atom's nucleus, that atom's neutrons could be used as projectiles to split another atom's nucleus, causing a nuclear chain reaction. Each time a nucleus was split, an enormous amount of energy was released.

During World War II, I worked diligently on the Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb. After the war, however, he believed the human death toll from these bombs was too large. In 1946, I worked as a professor at the University of Chicago's Institute of Nuclear Studies. In 1949, I argued against the development of a hydrogen bomb. It was built anyway.

On November 29, 1954, I succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 53.

Then they named the 100th element after me, Fermium.